Snake names honor Darwin, god of fire, university professor
Snake names honor Darwin, god of fire, university professor
A professor from Louisiana is in an exciting company, honored to have one of the three recently identified species of snakes from the Galapagos Islands that bear his name.
"They called one for Charles Darwin, which is a truism, and another for the Greek god of fire, and another for me, of all people," said Robert A. Thomas, environmental biologist and head of the Center for Environmental Communication. at Loyola University in New Orleans.
The snake in question, a beautiful creature with creamy brown and yellow stripes throughout, is called Pseudalsophis thomasi.
"I have a photo recorded here in the office, and it makes me smile every time I look at it," said Thomas.
He has been studying snakes since the 1970s and began studying those of the Galapagos Islands in 1984. In 1997, he published a general description of Galapagos snakes based on characteristics such as counts of scales, patterns and other forms and shapes.
A team of Brazilian and Ecuadorian biologists led by Dr. Hussam Zaher of the University of Sao Paulo used genetic analysis to study snakes and develop their evolutionary route through the chain of islands.
That study identified the three new species. In addition to Pseudalsophis thomasi, they are Pseudalsophis hephaestus, by the volcanic origins of the chain of islands; and Pseudalsophis darwini, for the scientist whose theory of evolution emerged from a voyage through the Galápagos.
Their findings were published online on August 22 by the journal Systematics and Biodiversity, and on September 3 in the Brazilian magazine Pesquisa.
The scientists invited Thomas to join the team five years ago. He shared the information he had collected and obtained more from the museums of the United States. Then the others told him that they wanted to name one of the new species to honor their work studying the snakes on the islands.
"I had to leave the paper, the rules are that you can not be an author in a paper where something bears your name," Thomas said. "I thought deeply and decided that there are only some fun honors that you should not let go of in life, this is one of them."
Thomas said the species is slightly poisonous but not dangerous to humans, only to lizards and other small animals. The one used for the formal description of the species was 726 millimeters (about 28.6 inches) long and weighed 105 grams (3.7 ounces).
Thomas said he has photos of the snake he took in 1984, not knowing it was a different species. They were not very good, he said, because the snake was writhing, but they allowed him to describe the scales of the belly and the pattern of the back.
"A friend could have named a bacterium of my name in Outer Slobovia and that would have been a real honor ... But this is a snake I've worked on, so it's very important to me," he said. "I'm very honored."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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